Wander and Roam (Wander #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and vegetables can be mighty overwhelming.”
    “I better get back to the house.” Susan steps back onto the path. “Zachary will be waking from his nap at any time now. Enjoy your meal.”
    As soon as she’s out of earshot, Sage places another scoop of melon on his plate. “After thinking about it, I rather enjoy this melon.”
    I need to veer the conversation to something other than my melon catastrophe. “Tell me about your family.” Great. Basic Conversation 101. How much more pathetic can I get?
    Sage takes pity on me, though. “It’s just my mom and me at home.”
    “No brothers or sisters?”
    He looks away for a moment. “Siblings would’ve been nice, but I’m an only child.”
    I take a bite of cherry tomato and quinoa. “I feel the opposite. The privacy and solitude of being an only child must be wonderful. I grew up with three brothers, a sister, and not a moment to myself. Even now.”
    “Even now?” He wrinkles his forehead. “Were you still living with your family before you came to Australia?”
    “No, but between the four of them, someone’s always calling to check in on me.” I glance at my bowl. I’m entering dangerous territory here. “I’m the youngest, so they’re all pretty protective.”
    “Sounds nice. When you’re the only one, all the expectations are piled on top of you.” He shakes his head. “There’s no one else to try if you goof up. It can be suffocating.”
    “That theory never worked for my parents.” I try a bite of the orange melon then pucker up in response. “My siblings all have great careers: My brothers—the professor, the lawyer, and the accountant—and my sister, the doctor. They’ve left big shoes—really big shoes—to fill.”
    He glances at my discarded melon. “So am I just a terrible teacher, or is there some other reason you picked unripe melons?”
    Is he’s flirting with me? In high school, none of the other boys ever flirted, an unspoken, unanimous sign of respect to Robbie. Respect they didn’t have for any of the other girls’ guys. When I started at Erie U, I shut down any flirting at the first “hello”. I couldn’t think about flirting back then, with everything I was going through. Everything that Robbie was going through.
    I’m left in this awkward place. A part of me—this mystery woman I don’t know at all—wants to flirt back, but the loyal, rational side knows I couldn’t live with myself if I did.
    “Do you want to go on a walk before we head to the yurt?” Sage stacks up the empty dishes into a neat pile. “It’s still pretty early.”
    “That sounds nice,” I say, while the rational girl I used to know screams a silent ‘No!”
    He takes my hand again. I’m so sensitive that his innocent touch sends fireworks shooting up to my elbows.
    “Where are we going?” I try to keep my mind focused on the mundane.
    He leads me onto a path I haven’t explored yet. “Enjoy the mystery. Life is better with surprises.”
    I can’t remember the last time I allowed myself a surprise. For the last few years, I have clung to things I could control and rejected everything else. But do I have control over anything?
    I couldn’t control when Robbie left, after all. I’m failing at controlling my attraction to Sage. I cannot even control the tidal wave of emotions trying to wipe me out. Maybe it would be better to just go along with life and see where it takes me, instead of fighting it every step of the way.
    Sage leads me into an open field. The turned soil lies empty, with only the occasional weed growing.
    “What grows here?” I ask.
    Sage shrugs. “It probably used to be full of some sort of grain, but Susan hasn’t planted it for a while.”
    “I can see why.” The field is enormous. It would take a whole crew of farm workers to manage something this size. “So why are we here?”
    Sage heads over to a plastic storage bin at the far end of the field. He pulls out a thick, rough blanket, spreads it across the